Support

Glenwood Help Desk

Glenwood is south central Nebraska’s leading provider of broadband Internet service. We have the wide range of deliver methods, including cable modem, DSL, wireless, and fiber network optics. Our Internet is backed by exceptional customer service, local technical support (you call and a local person answers right away), professional installation, and much more.

Fiber to the home (FTTH) is the delivery of a communications signal over optical fiber from the operator's switching equipment all the way to a home or business, thereby replacing existing copper infrastructure such as telephone wires and coaxial cable.

An ONT (optical network terminal) is an your connection to Glenwood. This device (a small black box) is placed in your business/office, in your home either inside or outside the building and serves as the termination point “D-Marc” for your connection.

The ONT's job is to convert the light pulses into electrical pulses - but why? Because your internal network runs on electricity, the ONT takes the light from Glenwoods fiber network lines and basically acts as a translator.

In practical applications, all this means is that the fiber is terminated in the ONT (the fiber line actually attaches to the box itself) and you then connect your devices (firewalls, switches, additional routers, etc.) into the available ethernet ports on the other side of the ONT.

ONTs can vary in features. They can either act as gateway devices and provide IP addresses to your devices, or they can bridge the connection between your provider and your network.

Some ONTs also have wireless capabilities and act as an all-in-one solution for your home and business.

3-A firewall is a network security system that monitors and controls incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules. A firewall typically establishes a barrier between a trusted internal network and untrusted external network, such as the Internet.

4-Network address translation (NAT) is a method of remapping one IP address space into another by modifying network address information in IP header of packets while they are in transit across a traffic routing device.
The internet has basically run out of IPv4 address space for use on the Internet. (IPv6 is the new wave)
NAT is used to convert a “private” IP address to a “public” IP address.
These Private IP address blocks à 10.0.0.0/8172.16.0.0/12192.168.0.0/16 can be used in a company’s local “internal” network, but they cannot be routed via the Internet, only Public IP address can be routed on the Internet. Thus a NAT device converts these for you and allows private address in a local-internal network.
Example: Glenwood office uses private address192.168.46.x but our NAT device converts these to public IP addresses 74.51.143.26.

5-A wireless access point (WAP), or more generally just access point (AP), is a networking hardware device that allows a Wi-Fi devices (laptop, pda, tablet, computer, TV) to connect to a wired network. The AP usually connects to a router/switch (via a wired network), but it can also be an integral component of the router itself. An AP uses the “air” to transmit signals and does not use copper or fiber for example. The “air” can cause troubles because you can get too far away from the AP, and walls and other objects will affect the signal and thus the signal strength ends up too low to allow for valid communications.
Wireless uses to frequency bands. 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.
AP send out a SSID (service set identifier) messages that wireless devices can see and then know there is a WiFi (wireless) network they can connect to. You will see different SSID on your device when you go to different places/locations.
This can be an “open” wireless connection (NOT secured) or can have wireless encryption to protect the data from others seeing it. One will see a symbol like this if it is a secure/safe connection! This typically requires a password the first time you connect. Then your device stores this for later connections to this WiFi network.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So the “router” is doing many of functions internally.
These routers really do not have many issue’s to worry about other that the “wireless” signal that is being transmitted over the “air”.

Things that can help?→Adjust your antennas? (Probably not much help)
→Changing your router’s channel can help. What does this mean?
→ A great tool for to see this is called “WiFi Analyzer” by Matt Hafner.

→One can use a tool to see what channel you are using and if there, are other ssid signals on that channel and if so you can move you router/AP channel to one other one via configuration settings.
→ A great tool for to see this is called “WiFi Analyzer” by Matt Hafner.
→Move your router to a location that is closer to where you use your WiFi devices.
(not so easy to do as you may have to run CAT5e/CAT6 cables)
→Add more WiFi devices-AP to increase you wireless coverage. (Probably the best solution)
→If Wireless Speeds seem to be the trouble.

The best way to test this is to plug a computer into the ONT or router port with an Ethernet cable. This will prove if the problem is with wireless or wired 99% of the time.

A wireless access point (WAP), or more generally just access point (AP), is a networking hardware device that allows a Wi-Fi devices (laptop, pda, tablet, computer, TV) to connect to a wired network. The AP usually connects to a router/switch (via a wired network), but it can also be an integral component of the router itself. An AP uses the “air” to transmit signals and does not use copper or fiber for example. The “air” can cause troubles because you can get too far away from the AP, and walls and other objects will affect the signal and thus the signal strength ends up too low to allow for valid communications.

Wireless uses to frequency bands. 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.
AP send out a SSID (service set identifier) messages that wireless devices can see and then know there is a WiFi (wireless) network they can connect to. You will see different SSID on your device when you go to different places/locations.

This can be an “open” wireless connection (NOT secured) or can have wireless encryption to protect the data from others seeing it. One will see a symbol like this if it is a secure/safe connection! This typically requires a password the first time you connect. Then your device stores this for later connections to this WiFi network.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So the “router” in your home is doing many of functions internally.
These routers really do not have many issue’s to worry about other that the “wireless” signal that is being transmitted over the “air”.

Things that can help?→Adjust your antennas? (Probably not much help)
→Changing your router’s channel can help. What does this mean?
→ A great tool for to see this is called “WiFi Analyzer” by Matt Hafner.
On 2.4 Ghz there are only 3 channels we should/can use. 1, 3, 11

→One can use a tool to see what channel you are using and if there, are other ssid signals on that channel and if so you can move you router/AP channel to one other one via configuration settings.
→ A great tool for to see this is called “WiFi Analyzer” by Matt Hafner.
→Move your router to a location that is closer to where you use your WiFi devices.
(not so easy to do as you may have to run CAT5e/CAT6 cables)
→Add more WiFi devices-AP to increase you wireless coverage. (Probably the best solution)
→If Wireless Speeds seem to be the trouble.

The best way to test this is to plug a computer into the ONT or router port with an Ethernet cable. This will prove if the problem is with wireless or wired 99% of the time.